I am a boundless magnolia
celestial body, fertile,
[untranslatable]
without a cipher
ever distant/ever close…ha really like that….and its really cool the feeling of pulling back or in until you are boundless, which is a logical contast…

I like how you use that “depth of field” to describe self. My impression from this is that the peace comes from seeking clarity in expanding beyond that shallowness, sinking as deeply as possible in beauty.

Beautifully penned, Anna. I love the idea of melting in the presence of beauty. There is no more wonderful solitude than this. I also agree with you when you say moral freedom is gained from conquering fear. We each have to decide what we think and stand by it…and not be swayed by those who have opposing views. Your work, as always, is thought provoking. Thank you, Anna.

beautiful anna…the school i went to was the Kant-Gymnasium after emmanuel kant..so i know quite a bit about him….love all the touches and thoughts in your poem..quite some things to ponder…and love the boundless magnolia image that you close your poem with..

I’m sorry your encounter with the work was so unpleasant. Though art is not always created for the comfort of the viewer/reader. The intent of this piece however was not to create discomfort. I have disturbing paintings that are designed to unnerve/disorient but this photographic series was created to bring attention to the act of perceiving. Some artists that may shed light onto the intentional use of the blur are Uta Barth and Gerhard Richter.

Thanks Becky, as you know I struggle with how much to explicate and how much to allow the reader to discover for themselves. I always appreciate your willingness to engage and share your thoughts. To hear the process is refreshing has made my day :)!

fantastic illustration of the solitude within, love that you focused on an attempt to understand the underpinnings, seemingly open to the fact that solitude is artistry in many ways, I took much delight in the subtext, allusion and symbolism here. Strong, meaningful piece Anna. Wonderful read. Thanks

Yes, it is artistry, thank you for clearly seeing the link. I had hoped the addition of photographic terms and art criticism mixed with Kant’s views on the sublime would draw that connection. As you know I am always layering symbols, allusions, and subtext so that the poem does not become something to encounter once, consume, and then leave. It is intended to reveal meaning on multiple rereads and to allow the reader to learn something about their own point of view, feeling and ideas, as well. Sometimes I manage this more successfully than others but the underpinnings in this case felt sound and interconnected so I proceeded. Thank you for your close reading and willingness to engage the work to co-create meaning.

I love ” I am forever mutable melting in the presence of beauty”…yes, we do seem to merge and change when witnessing it…also glad you didn’t take out that stanza you weren’t sure about…can’t imagine anyone making fun of anything you have written, Anna. Love your painting too…very ethereal…suits your poem.

Thank you for your kind words. I read an article on the psychology of crying and ‘melting’ was used to describe why we may emote in response to awe/beauty. It made sense to me and it’s wonderful to hear it resonated with you too.

Agree with Charles M. – your line about moral freedom and conquering fear very direct and strong, and I found the whole in and out of the magnolia and celestial body and the close especially also beautiful. As, generally, the idea of the untranslatable – and yet we try! k.

This was a lovely write; I’m so glad I stumbled upon your RSS feed and figured out how to use it (tech neophyte here) – it’s obvious you put a lot of effort into your work and it pays off … this poem has much depth and wonderful imagery … nicely d one.

Robert Anton Wilson

Semantic noise also seems to haunt every communication system. A man may sincerely say, ‘I love fish,’ and two listeners may both hear him correctly, yet the two will neurosemantically file this in their brains under opposite categories. One will think the man loves to dine on fish, and the other will think he loves to keep fish (in an aquarium).

Witold Gombrowicz

Here is the writer who with all his heart and soul, with his art, in anguish and travail offers nourishment – there is the reader who’ll have none of it, and if he wants, it’s only in passing, offhandedly, until the phone rings. Life’s trivia are your undoing. You are like a man who has challenged a dragon to a fight but will be yapped into a corner by a little dog. from Ferdydurke

I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.

Gustav Flaubert

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Dušan “Charles” Simić

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

Monique Wittig

Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it… Language as a whole gives everyone the same power of becoming an absolute subject through its exercise. But gender, an element of language, works upon this ontological fact to annul it as far as women are concerned and corresponds to a constant attempt to strip them of the most precious thing for a human being – subjectivity. Gender is an ontological impossibility because it tries to accomplish the division of Being. But Being is not divided. God or Man as being are One and whole. So what is this divided Being introduced into language through gender? It is an impossible Being, it is a Being that does not exist, an ontological joke, a conceptual maneuver to wrest from women what belongs to them by right: conceiving of oneself as a total subject through the exercise of language. The result of the imposition of gender, acting as a denial at the very moment when one speaks, is to deprive women of the authority of speech, and to force them to make their entrance in a crablike way, particularizing themselves and apologizing profusely. The result is to deny them any claim to the abstract, philosophical, political discourses that give shape to the social body. Gender then must be destroyed. The possibility of its destruction is given through the very exercise of language. For each time I say ‘I’ I reorganize the world from my point of view and through abstraction I lay claim to universality. This fact holds true for every locutor.

W.S. Merwin

All the things that really matter to us are impossible…Writing poetry is impossible. I don’t know how to write a poem. A poem – there has to be a part of it that is not my own will; it comes from somewhere that I don’t know. There is so much that comes out of what we don’t know and what we don’t have any control over. I think that one of the only things we can learn as we get older is a certain humility. – from Doing the Impossible

Thomas Aquinas

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.